tmhudson2
New Member
I was talking to a new car dealer after dinner on Friday night. Typically, he was complaining about the Cash for Clunkers program. I had heard about the overloaded government computer system where dealers have to send their ‘paperwork’ to get reimbursed, with many dealers having been paid by Treasury for less than 5% of the cars they’ve taken in on trade in the promotion, and some less than 3%. No surprises there.
I had heard the stories of mechanics getting a tear in their eye as they euthanized still-functional cars and trucks, in some cases vehicles with fewer miles than their own rides. As a gearhead, I feel their pain.
This dealer was going to stop taking clunkers in on trade on Sunday, a day early. Not only was his wife working after hours to try to get the entries uploaded to the DOT system; he was worried about getting paid for some of his trade-ins at all. One of the provisions of the program is that no family may trade in more than one clunker, yet there is no provision in the Federal database that is shared with dealers to allow them to see if that seller has brought in more than one clunker for trade.
Let’s say Joe Clinton takes a ‘96 Chevy pickup with a market value of $800 in to the local Chevy dealer to trade on a new pickup, and gets the $3500 trade-in credit. Then he takes his ‘92 Eldorado worth $2000 to the Caddy dealer to trade in on a new CTS, and gets the $4500 trade-in credit. Which dealer gets reimbursed, and which gets stuck? Whoever gets their ‘paperwork’ accepted into the Federal computer system first gets reimbursed, and the other dealer is out of luck, and he doesn’t even have a vehicle he can fix up and sell, since he’s already poisoned it with sodium silicate.
And just how is the government going to manage our healthcare system? It’s in the fine print….
I had heard the stories of mechanics getting a tear in their eye as they euthanized still-functional cars and trucks, in some cases vehicles with fewer miles than their own rides. As a gearhead, I feel their pain.
This dealer was going to stop taking clunkers in on trade on Sunday, a day early. Not only was his wife working after hours to try to get the entries uploaded to the DOT system; he was worried about getting paid for some of his trade-ins at all. One of the provisions of the program is that no family may trade in more than one clunker, yet there is no provision in the Federal database that is shared with dealers to allow them to see if that seller has brought in more than one clunker for trade.
Let’s say Joe Clinton takes a ‘96 Chevy pickup with a market value of $800 in to the local Chevy dealer to trade on a new pickup, and gets the $3500 trade-in credit. Then he takes his ‘92 Eldorado worth $2000 to the Caddy dealer to trade in on a new CTS, and gets the $4500 trade-in credit. Which dealer gets reimbursed, and which gets stuck? Whoever gets their ‘paperwork’ accepted into the Federal computer system first gets reimbursed, and the other dealer is out of luck, and he doesn’t even have a vehicle he can fix up and sell, since he’s already poisoned it with sodium silicate.
And just how is the government going to manage our healthcare system? It’s in the fine print….
